Use of the computer for communicating on-line with others has recently become much more popular with the increased awareness by the public of the Internet and of services provided by commercial service networks. In addition to enabling access to information, exchange of e-mail messages, and downloading of files, a link to the Internet or to a commercial service network provides an individual with the opportunity to interact with others who are connected to the network.
One of the more common options for enabling several users of an on-line service to interact is through a chat session. A user joining a chat session is added to a list of participants and can then view comments transmitted by other participants and enter and transmit a response. In text only chat sessions, each user's screen is typically divided into two panes. Comments that have been transmitted by those participating in the chat session appear in one pane, and any message being entered by the user appears in the other pane on the user's computer display screen. For practical reasons, chat sessions are usually limited to a predefined number of participants. If any person attempts to join once the limit is reached, the person is typically notified that the chat session is full and precluded from joining. Alternatively, the person may be offered the opportunity to join another separate chat session on the same topic in which others are participating. In chat sessions involving a well known personality, hundreds of people may join the session, but only the host and the moderator are active in the chat session, and all others are simply observers. However, provision may be made to enable questions previously submitted by the observers to be displayed to solicit a response from the guest. The host controls the chat session. The virtual space in which each chat session occurs is sometimes referred to as a "room," since the participants interactively communicate just as if they were meeting in a room.
With the increasing use of modems operating at speeds of 28.8 Kbps on commercial networks, graphical chat sessions are becoming more practical. In a graphical chat session, all of the participants are represented by avatars or icons that are grouped in a graphic environment or "world." In addition to a graphic window showing the chat world, the display screen on each participant's computer typically still includes the chat pane and the message entry pane, as described above. When another user joins the chat session, the person's identifier, moniker, or name is added to a list of the participants, and an avatar for the new participant is added in the graphic chat world. The list normally appears in a third pane. When any participant leaves the chat session, the withdrawal is noted in the member pane, and the avatar representing the person is removed from the graphic chat world.
Although the graphic chat session provides visual information that improves a participant's knowledge of the other participants, the approach for displaying the participants in a conventional graphic chat world is somewhat stilted and artificial, because it fails to convey much information about the personality and emotional state of the participants as the chat session progresses. A graphic chat session of this type is implemented in the Worlds Chat paradigm, which was developed by World, Inc. In a Worlds Chat session, each avatar is associated with a plurality of bitmap sprites, each sprite representing the avatar from a different angle. The multiple views of each avatar do not provide any animation. A user can customize the sprites that represent him/her by modifying these bitmaps using a conventional paint program and a format conversion program that is provided by World, Inc.
In the ImagiNation Network (INN) developed by AT&T, users can customize their avatars by selecting various facial components such as the eyes, nose, and hair style from predefined options, in a manner much like that used in police identikits to create a likeness of a person. The avatars that are thus automatically produced blink their eyes at random times, but this limited animation fails to convey any emotion, action, or personality trait of the individual who is represented by the avatar.
Even though the particular avatar selected by a person and any customization applied with a paint program may reveal some of the individual's personality, such avatars are generally too static in nature and do not reflect the changing emotional state associated with the text messages transmitted by a participant in a graphic chat session. Ideally, a chat session in a virtual world should convey the same kinds of visual interaction that might occur in an actual face-to-face meeting of the people involved in a discussion, and the avatars representing the participants should thus clearly indicate the personalities of each individual and the emotions that are associated with the words communicated between the participants. Although present technology does not permit an ideal virtual world to be achieved during an on-line graphic chat session, it should be possible to animate the avatars sufficiently so that they can convey gestures that represent these traits. When people converse, gestures are an important facet of the communication, since they indicate the personality and emotional state of the speakers. In a graphic chat session, gestures can provide the same visual clues that they provide in a normal conversation. Although gestures are normally used in conversation without conscious thought, in a graphic chat session, it would be preferable for a participant to be able to select the gesture that will be used in combination with text that is transmitted to indicate the emotion or state of mind associated with the communication.
There are times when a participant in a chat session may wish to limit those with whom the person interacts. For example, if a discussion between two of the people involved in the chat session is of particular interest to a third party, the third person may not want to be distracted by communications transmitted from others in the chat session. In many cases, the participant may want to enable only selected persons in the chat session to view his/her avatar and the messages that are sent to those persons; however, this type of interactive control is currently not practical. Yet, it should be possible to selectively limit the group of participants with whom a person interacts so that only selected avatars in the chat session are seen by the person and so that only communications from the selected members of the group are observed by the person. Moreover, it would be preferable to select the members of the limited group that will be observed by the participant in a more graphical and natural manner. When two people want to speak privately in a room, they simply move away from the others in the room so that their private conversation is not audible beyond the range of the other person with whom they are conversing. A similar approach should be applicable to limit those with whom a person interacts in a graphic chat world. Currently, no conventional graphic chat session provides a technique to spatially select the avatars of others that the participant wants to observe and from whom communications will be received. Providing this feature will enable a participant to perceive the avatars of those selected and to receive communications only from those members of the chat session who have been selected. The participant will not perceive the avatars or communications from those who are in the chat room, but were not selected.